Backstage Pass: The Bitcoin Difficulty of stablecoins
Tether, Fidelity, Circle // Kansas Reserve // Bitcoin Difficulty eases // Many bears, permabull // NFTs? B(I)RB // HesabPay
Housekeeping: I’m going to turn on monetization February 1.
Eleven years ago this week, bitcoin was $253.
The 11th largest cryptocurrency was dash.
The 111th was unattainium.
Stablecoins gone wild
This week saw the launch of Tether’s made in America stablecoin, USAT, and the announcement of Fidelity’s forthcoming Ethereum-based stablecoin, FIDD.
You see: Bull case for stables.
I see: Rough year ahead for Circle.
Let’s go to the boards! In the third quarter, Circle posted over $700 million in revenue. Meanwhile, Tether’s out there buying a ton of gold every week out of its petty cash.
But see the thing is it isn’t just Tether that Circle is getting owned by. It’s also Coinbase. It’s still giving Coinbase half the money it earns on USDC reserves. That’s a big part of why its profits look like such weak tea considering it has $72 billion in reserves earning yield.
As it sta…